• blue2501
    +4

    I think South Park explained it best:

    If somebody kills somebody, it's a crime, but if somebody kills somebody of a different race, it's a hate crime. And we think that that is a savage hypocrisy, because all crimes are hate crimes. If a man beats another man because that man was sleeping with his wife, is that not a hate crime? If a person vandalizes a government building, is it not because of his hate for the government? The motivation for a crime shouldn't affect the sentencing. It is time to stop splitting people into groups. All hate crime laws do is support the idea that blacks are different from whites, that homosexuals are different, that we aren't the same. But instead we should all be treated the same, with the same laws and the same punishments for the same crimes.

    • hallucigenia
      +4

      I don't think that the logic behind "hate crimes" is quite that facile, but I think I agree with South Park on this one. With hate crimes you have to get into motive, and I don't think that having bigotry as a motive should make a crime more or less illegal. I don't think that you get rid of bigotry by punishing it away.